Google Inc., the Web company that a decade ago used engineering prowess to conquer the nascent online advertising market, is now aiming technology and its cash pile at another fledgling industry: offshore wind farming.

The company said yesterday that it's investing in a $5 billion underwater network that can channel electricity from wind turbines scattered off the Atlantic coast, enough to light up 1.9 million homes from New York to Virginia.

"This project is Google's signal that we want to have some real impact as we are also making serious financial returns in our energy project investing," Dan Reicher, who directs Google's energy and climate projects, said in an interview. "We couldn't be in a better place at a better moment to be making an investment like this."

Google is betting that its support will encourage other investors to back wind farming, which the Global Wind Energy Council says will generate more than 22 percent of the world's electricity in two decades. The investment also may help the U.S. narrow a lead held by China, which is installing more than twice the wind-generating power of the U.S.